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About Microsoft System Center Application Virtualization

Application Virtualization

Micrsoft Applivation Virtualization (or "App-V") can be
considered as one of the first Application Virtualization products
for Windows Operating Systems. Application Virtualization isolates
programs, that are running on a Windows OS, from other applications
and from the OS itself. This essentially is done by
redirecting ("virtualizing") function calls to the OS' File
System, Registry and other objects. Because System Calls are
isolated, Application Virtualization allows to run
multiple Versions of one application at the same time or to
run applications, that usualy woulöd have file or registry
conflicts, at the same time. Also, the underlying
Operating System is protected, because Application Virtualization
also may redirect modification attempts of System Components like
Windows DLLs, cruicial Registry Keys and Values and others.

Besides this mechanism of Application Isolation, AppVirt ofthen
is refered to as "Application Streaming". This, however, is not
part of every Application Virtualization Product. In
Application Virtualization Solutions, usually the Virtual
Applcation Packge has to be downloaded to the Client, before it can
be executed (whereas the Client can be a Windows Workstation or
Terminal/Citrix Server). To decrease deployment time and network
traffic when deploying new Packages, Streaming comes up. Streaming
in that context means, that not the whole package is downloaded to
the client. Rather, only a portion of the whole package (usually
20-40%) are transfered from a central server to the clients. This
allows to start new applications quite fast, because they already
run shortly after this inital portion has been transferred.

Microsoft App-V is the successor of Softricity's SoftGrid,
. App-V's products cover both, Application Isolation and
Application Streaming feature. In fact it was SoftGrid that
established the terms "Application Virtualization" and "Application
Streaming" to be synonyms.

Microsoft Application Virtualization History

Microsoft App-V is the successor of SoftGrid, a product that
originally was created by the Boston based Company Softricity

Microsoft bought Softricity in July 2006 (however it was almost
clear that this acquisition will happen some months earlier).
Microsoft then released "SoftGrid 4.1" that was the first version
which passed Microsoft's Quality Assurance Process. Almost at the
same time Microsoft released SoftGrid 4.2 that mainly added Support
for Microsoft Vista.

The current version is App-V 4.5, that mainly adds the concept
of "Dynamic Suite Composition" and a broad range of supported
Deployment Technologies.

App-V 4.6, that will add 64-bit support for the Virtualization
Client is available since February 2010 and was updated to Service
Pack 1 in February 2012